UNIT 20 PEOPLE’S MOVEMENTS Structure 20.0 Objectives 20.1 Introduction 20.2 Mulshi Satyagraha: The First Struggle against Development Induced Displacement 20.2.1 Mulshi to the Present: Gamut of Issues 20.3 Tawa Dam: Struggle over Fishing Rights in the Reservoir 20.4 Sardar Sarovar Project and Narmada Bachao Andolan: From Rehabilitation to Anti-Dam 20.5 The South Maharashtra Movement: Broadening the Scope of the Struggles of the PAPs through Innovative Demands and Strategies 20.6 Recent Movements against Land Acquisition for Special Economic Zones (SEZs) 20.7 People’s Movements against Displacement: A Summary 20.7.1 Characterisation of the Movements against Displacement 20.7.2 The Issue of Exclusion-Inclusion 20.7.3 Multi-dimensional and Layered Movements 20.7.4 Typology of Movements and Issues 20.7.5 Contestation over Compensation: Who Gets Compensated? 20.7.6 Recognition of Eco-system Damage 20.7.7 Compensation Package: Land for Land 20.7.8 Even Landless to Get Land 20.7.9 Who Should Pay and Where Will the Land Come from? 20.7.10 From Resettlement and Compensation to Rehabilitation 20.7.11 Involvement and Consent of the PAPs 20.7.12 Separate Body for Rehabilitation 20.7.13 Sequencing: Rehabilitation before Construction 20.7.14 Expanding the Rehabilitation Package 20.7.15 Contestation over the Nature of the Project 20.8 Let Us Sum Up 20.9 Cues to Check Your Progress 20.10 Glossary 20.11 References 20.0 OBJECTIVES After going through this Unit, you will be able to: i) get an overview of people’s movements against displacement in India; ii) important issues brought up by the people’s movements; and iii) examine innovative people’s movements by the displaced persons. 20.1 INTRODUCTION This Unit titled “People’s Movements” under the overall theme of “Role of Participation in Sustainable Development” (MRR-102) would mainly focus on a few of the popular people’s movements, which have brought up, as well as tried to re-define, the issue of the role and participation of displaced persons in the planning and implementation of development projects. The overall thrust of this Unit is to show how people’s movements have impacted in expanding the meaning and mode of rehabilitation. 20.2 MULSHI SATYAGRAHA: THE FIRST STRUGGLE AGAINST DEVELOPMENT INDUCED DISPLACEMENT The Mulshi Satyagraha is one of the first struggles against development induced displacement fought in the early 1920s by peasants in Western Maharashtra when they opposed the Mulshi dam built by the Tatas (Vohra 1994). The struggle was led by the young Congressman Senapati Bapat. The Tatas came to Mulshi for the construction of a dam as part of their project to supply power to the city of Bombay. It was also a struggle against the British as the British (Bombay government) had sanctioned the dam. Mulshi Satyagraha is supposed to be one of the longest Satyagraha during the freedom struggle lasting for about four years from 1921 to 1924. Senapati Bapat and his followers succeeded in halting construction of the dam for a year. There was a strong sense of wrong and deep feeling of resentment among the peasantry affected by the project as they were neither consulted on the project, nor their consent was taken. Suspicion and distrust was high in both the government and the company, due mainly to the procedure of acquisition. The peasants were reluctant to part with their land on account of its productivity, the natural facilities of irrigation and nominal amount of land revenue. They were also reluctant to part with ancestral homes, and traditional places of worship and see them submerged under water. They also did not want to emigrate from one place to another (Gadgil and Guha 1995). The Bombay government promulgated an ordinance whereby the Tatas could acquire land on payment of compensation. This verdict of the court split the movement into two factions. The Brahman landlords of Pune, who owned much of the land in the Mulshi valley, were eager to accept compensation. However, the tenants and their leader, Senapati Bapat, were totally opposed to the dam project. With the landlords, the power company and the state all ranged against them, there was little the peasants could do, and the movement collapsed in its third year. In fact Gandhiji had persuaded the satyagrahis to give up fast on July 12, 1923 and it is alleged that Gandhiji did not take an unequivocal stand in support of the demands of the agitationists. Tragically, the landlords pocketed the compensation, and the actual tillers of the soil were left high and dry. Though the movement finally collapsed in 1924, the movement at least succeeded in forcing the Tatas to provide reasonable negotiated compensation for the submerged lands. The movement of the Mulshi dam oustees is an important landmark in the struggles of the project affected persons (PAPs) because it brought out the importance of compensation and consent. 20.2.1 Mulshi to the Present: Gamut of Issues The Mulshi satyagraha was just a beginning. There has been a mushrooming of movements against displacement after independence, especially during the last 20-25 years. Many more issues got involved and they came to be taken up and fought and slowly the nature of rehabilitation for the development induced displacees (DIDs) began to change. These issues could be broadly grouped into three. First is the issue of compensation, including the package and its implementation. Second is the set of issues related to the processes and procedures like prior consultation with the potential displacees, their consent and sequencing of project implementation and rehabilitation. The third is the contestation of the notion of greater common good and the nature of the project itself and here the positions range from no to the project to articulating alternatives, which can bring down the extent of displacement with or without compromising on the envisaged benefits of the original project. Though there are no uniform policies yet and these issues have been incorporated in varying degrees in different struggles and states (policies and rehabilitation packages), there is a clear direction that is emerging and this direction is important. Though there are many pioneering movements of the displaced people that have tried to address the issues that we discussed above, the space and other limits of this Unit would not allow us to get into the details of all of them. There are too many of such movements and volumes can be written about each one of them. Instead, what we would attempt here is to concentrate on just three movements, which we believe can further elaborate the issues that we discussed in section 2 above and have elements in them that can contribute to widen the scope of the overall movement of the displaced. The first one that we would take up is the Tawa struggle in which displaced people could establish their rights over the reservoir for fish production and set up their own co-operative society to manage it. The second one is the famous Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA), probably the best known struggle of the displaced people both in India and outside and which brought to the forefront some of the larger concerns and critiques related to state sponsored “development”. And finally we have the South Maharashtra Movement led by the Shetmajoor Kashtakari Shetkari Sanghattana and Shramik Mukti Dal who have been able to operationalise, to some extent, the principle of adhi vikasansheel punarvasan, mag prakalp (development-oriented rehabilitation first, only then the project) and set up well defined processes and procedures for the same, expand the rehabilitation package by forcing the government to pay the dam oustees pani bhatta (water allowance), organise potential displacees on the basis of a concrete alternative proposals and force the government to at least partially accept it and also organise joint struggles of both the dam affected and drought affected people. 20.3 TAWA DAM: STRUGGLE OVER FISHING RIGHTS IN THE RESERVOIR The Tawa dam is on the river Tawa, one of the major left bank tributaries of the Narmada in Kesla block, Hoshangabad district, Madhya Pradesh. The Tawa, constructed in 1975, is the first big dam to be built as part of the Narmada Valley Development Plan (NVDP), which envisages construction of 30 big dams, 135 medium dams and 3000 small dams on the Narmada and its tributaries. The reservoir spread over 21,000 ha submerged forty-four Gond and Korku villages. The evacuees were among the first tribal people to be displaced by ‘development’ in central India. Apparently the displaced persons were given a compensation of 188 to 375 rupees per ha of land (Singh 2007). Most of the oustees had been displaced twice before – once by an ordnance factory and later by a firing range. In fact the construction of the dam went off rather peacefully as there was not much of an agitation by the displaced people. However, conflict arose after the completion of the dam on the question of fishing rights in the reservoir. Once the reservoir was completed the state fisheries corporation took over fishing in the reservoir. It also brought skilled fishermen from both within and outside the state and had them settled in the valley. The displaced tribals, who till the construction of the dam used to catch fish from the river for their domestic consumption all their life suddenly became ‘poachers’. In 1994-95, because of the huge losses, the reservoir was leased to a contractor. The contractor, apart from resorting to indiscriminate and unsustainable practices to maximise profits also spread terror in the area through hired musclemen.